


S and Columbia

by Chromat1cs



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Banter, First Dates, First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, M/M, Online Dating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 07:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18464509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromat1cs/pseuds/Chromat1cs
Summary: Sirius Black doesn'tdodates. At least not after a series of particularly shitty dates sours his opinion. Monday plans feel like they might lead to more of the same, but perhaps the universe has a very strange way of making itself felt after all.





	S and Columbia

**Author's Note:**

> I've had the compulsion to turn my own first date with my partner into an R/S first date for a while, and this was a really fun exercise in remembering a lot of very sweet moments that had been stacked under a lot of good history over the last three years :>
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

God. Fuck Mondays. 

_ Fuck  _ Mondays. 

Sirius chucks his keys into the entryway dish at the same time he tosses his coat onto the rack with just as much exasperation, and groans with a boiling virility that builds until he’s open-mouthed yelling at nothing in the kitchen. When he pauses for breath, shutting his eyes and heaving a deep, tremulous sigh, he mentally weighs the merits of leaping from the shitty little window into the alley and whether or not two broken legs would be more or less obnoxious than the clients he’s had to suffer all day long. 

“Hey, don’t you have a date tonight?”

His eyes snap open when Marlene pipes up from their couch across from the television. “FUCK.” The last thing Sirius wants to do after the day he’s just had, the  _ last thing, _ is to sit across from some yuppie asshole who will probably only talk about himself the entire time. 

“Don’t shoot the messenger, Jesus,” Marlene crunches around what sounds like a handful of popcorn, the racket of her latest favorite sit-com accompanying her. Sirius glares and pokes his head out of the kitchen archway to see that it’s potato chips. She raises one perfectly-penciled eyebrow at him. “What? You’re the one who writes all your shit on the fridge calendar, and it’s no skin off my back if you don’t want to try getting laid tonight.”

“I’m not trying to get laid.”

“Ah, yes, such a noble millennial,” Marlene croons before casting a doubtful look over to the kitchen; its strength is largely ruined by her fluffy pink pajama bottoms. “It’s a swiping app, Sirius, hate to break it to you but at least seventy percent of the people you’ve matched with only want to get their dicks wet.”

Sirius narrows his eyes at his roommate. “Your confidence in my whirlwind romance is staggering.”

Sulking back into the little broom closet of a kitchen, Sirius slides his phone out of his pocket and thumbs over to the app that was yes,  _ ostensibly _ , made for finding hookups: Fawkes. Sirius had always thought the name was stupid and corporate, another way to make desperate singles look at ads while having the wool pulled over their eyes about being able to find their way out of the lonely riot of single living in all the massive fucking monolith cities,  _ Spread Your Wings And Light Your Fire! _ , it’s such a dumb notion, that one should need somebody else to feel fulfilled, renewed, fucking  _ whole— _

Sirius sighs and shuts his roiling thoughts up with a single  _ Goddammit _ that swallows up his brain. The single message left in his ask box, the only person left in his spread of matches that hadn’t opened with an innuendo or surprised derision at Sirius’ veiled references to silly things like old books and video games—Remus, 24, with an honest smile, consistently within five miles of the city, above six feet tall, and a succinct bio that had made Remus snort-laugh into the muzzy boredom of a Sunday morning on which he was markedly  _ not _ going to church before swiping right to be surprised by the match: _ Favorite things include coffee, vinyl, beer, other people’s dogs. I’d put a Lou Reed quote here but I don’t want to be That Guy. Looking for dates, not hookups. Let’s NOT go look at monuments, so much better stuff to do here!! _

His own profile is familiar and feels painfully stilted when Sirius taps over to it, tuned and changed over the last few months to match his mood or the fine chance of accidentally taking a passable selfie.  _ Sad white dude with a guitar, not so sad lately if I can help it. Music, reading, dancing, video games. Name all 6 spells from the kit in Azkaban Quest and I’ll buy the first round. Dates only plz, let’s grab a coffee? _

Ugh. That profile had netted Sirius approximately seven-and-a-half subpar dates so far, two of which resulted in a second or third date that ultimately rounded off in mediocre sex and eventually—or immediately—fizzled after then. Suffice to say, his odds of a positive outcome from a Monday date with this Remus person aren’t looking too good. Sirius glances at the time at the top of his phone and groans to himself. The restaurant he and this guy had agreed upon, and confirms now by double-checking their direct messages, is a fifteen minute walk away. If he wants to be there on time, he needs to leave within ten minutes. 

“Convince me not to go,” Sirius calls into the sitting room. The laugh track from Marlene’s show rears up, timely and untimely all at once before she answers with a dramatic sigh. 

“You’ve been bitching about wanting a ‘real date’ for weeks. If this one is it, then I get some fucking peace. If it’s not, you’ll just keep carrying on as you have been anyways.” Marlene pauses to chomp on another handful of chips and barely looks up at Sirius when he mopes back out of the kitchen. “Take the chance if only for my own sanity.”

Sirius snorts, rolling his eyes on his way into their bathroom that’s as much of a shoebox as the kitchen. “Your empathy is staggering,” he crows. 

Marlene barks a single laugh as Sirius pulls his shirt off over his shoulders; “Fuck off and get pretty. You’re going.”

Twenty minutes later, Sirius sighs at himself outside the restaurant door. Just barely fashionably late, he steels himself and pushes in on the door.  _ If it sucks, just finish your drink and pretend Marlene got stuck in the freezer and you need to g— _ Shit. The door meets him with stoney resistance. Sirius looks down at the handle, holds in a pained groan, and  _ pulls _ at the door. 

It’s warm for early January, but Sirius is still grateful for the toasty interior that meets him. He casts his gaze about for somebody familiar and is about to ask the hostess if somebody named Remus had arrived yet, and that’s when he sees the man himself in person. Remus is alone at a little two-seater, with thick-rimmed glasses and a grey button up tucked comfortably into a pair of black jeans. He’s smiling distantly at something on his phone, his long limbs crowding the little table from Sirius’ profile view of him, and when Sirius comes to a stop at the edge of the table and awardly clears his throat, Remus looks up with and expression similar to having just been caught laughing at a very specific joke. His face lights up slightly beyond that laughter and Sirius’ insides clench. Alright, so he’s  _ very _ cute in person. Sirius spreads his own charming smile and hopes that it works.

“Hey, are you Remus?” Sirius shifts his feet a little, shrugging off his coat and draping it over the back of the open chair as though he won’t have to risk as much commitment to the date if his jacket does it first. The man stands up, unfolding like a graceful trifold of long limbs, and  _ Oh wow, _ he’s taller than Sirius’ even 6 feet. Alright. This could be fun, if only for vanity’s sake. 

“Hey! You’re Sirius then? Glad to meet another guy whose parents thought a name weightier than a human child was a good idea for a baby.” Remus extends a broad hand with a grin, fingernails bitten blunt, palms un-calloused, and Sirius finds himself smiling despite his well-built resistance to abject charm.

“Yes indeed, glad for solidarity. Have you been waiting long? Sorry I’m a couple minutes late.”

“Ah, no, not at all. I just popped over direct from work. Here, check this out.” Remus is still smiling that little grin to himself as they both settle into their seats, almost like an itch he can’t help but scratch, while he extends the screen of his phone across the table to Sirius. “My dad ordered a pound of lime jelly beans. This is his dinner tonight.”

Sirius blinks at the screen. Front and center in a text message thread is a photograph of a full bag of neon green jelly beans, a lowball of scotch, and the caption  _ I forgot this was in my checkout cart, oops, dinner time. _ Sirius splits with unbidden laughter that fizzes in him like carbonation. “Now that’s a dinner I can get behind.”

“Should I have made a reservation at a jellybean bar instead?” Remus’ face twists into mock horror and Sirius laughs again. Already he’s having a better time within two minutes than he’s had in slogging hours of previous dates. 

Alright. Perhaps, to Sirius’ internal chagrin, Marlene was right. 

They launch into the regularities of every date in this godforsaken city—what do you do, do you live you north of the river or south of it, how about your office, what do you think about this weather lately, huh? And it’s perfectly fine and flows along as it usually does, but instead of Sirius’ attention floating up into the corners of the restaurant to find dusty photographs or count the wall sconces, he finds himself wrapped up in cataloguing small pieces of Remus’ demeanor. He has a slightly crooked front tooth that peeks out under a softly-curling top lip when he tells half of a joke, testing the waters between two people with those gentle prods of introduction; his eyes are a stunning shade of hazel green, mossy and clear; his voice is an interesting lilt of reedier tenor mixing with a deeper timbre, something coffee-tinted, velvety and rumbling all at once. Sirius nurses a Manhattan while Remus keeps at some sort of gin drink, and Sirius orders french fries and nothing else. 

“Are you sure you don’t want  _ real _ food?” Remus jokes over his own chicken sandwich after Sirius denies the need for a full entree. His next paycheck isn’t coming until next week and he just paid rent, and the restaurant is a bit upper-scale—impressive, so Remus’ effort is certainly recognized just not quite accessible—and as charming as Remus has been for the past fifteen minutes, Sirius doesn’t want to dive in feet-first with anything more committed than a basket of herbed fries. Marlene could still get stuck in that proverbial freezer.

“I had a big  lunch today,” a half-truth, one that Sirius spins with a smile he knows is very handsome through a sip of his drink and a wave of his hand; “but you’re welcome to share, by the way.”

Remus chuckles to himself and snatches up two fries before waggling his eyebrows and tossing them into his mouth. “Still judging you for dipping them in mustard.”

“That’s my legacy now, isn’t it? ‘Sirius, took him to dinner, he drank bourbon, great hair, dashingly handsome, ate fries with mustard. Dealbreaker. Undateable.”

Remus laughs, his face creasing pleasantly as his head tips back slightly as though he’s surprised by the humor thrown at him, and Sirius bites his lip to hold in his own self-righteous smile as he takes another sip of his drink. He’s enjoying himself. This doesn’t do at all. 

After another twenty minutes of trading about-me’s—Remus’ “I’m a data analyst” for Sirius’ “I’m a video editor,” Sirius’ “I’m weak for good science fiction” for Remus’ “Oh, I’ve marathoned Lord Of The Rings three ways til Sunday since I was 12,” and on and on—Remus reaches an expectant hand across the table in the middle of a legthy discussion of music. “Here, I’ll just make a playlist for you. Do you mind?”

Sirius shrugs his phone out from his pocket and thumbs open his streaming app before passing it across the little table, now lit with a candle by their waiter after the sun began setting outside in earnest. He passes the little tablet to Remus with a smirk. “Do your worst.”

Remus sets to work, a man on a mission, while Sirius sits back and keeps chipping away at his fries. They’re really quite delicious, one of the finer offerings in the city in the tens of bars and restaurants at which Sirius has ordered them as his quick-getaway option for these dates, and he raises his eyebrows when Remus passes his phone back after just a couple short minutes. 

“You can look at it, just don’t listen to any of it until you have time to go from start to finish,” Remus warns him with a pointed finger and a knowing look, “I curated that shit  _ purposefully.” _

Sirius scrolls along the titles and artists, amused at some of the cognitive dissonance he sees there on the playlist simply titled  _ remus music: _ Miles Davis right next to Earl Sweatshirt. Howlin’ Wolf leading directly into Wilco. Destroyer, Charles Bradley, The National.

Sirius could certainly fuck with this. 

He snorts, without derision and instead a charmed little skip of breath. “Alright, maestro, let me make one for you too.”

Remus’ phone is a but nicer than Sirius’, weighter in Sirius’ palm than the one he just pocketed, and begins constructing his own  _ sirius music: _ The Who. Kaki King. Beethoven, Stravinsky, Villagers, and Agnes Obel. The breadth of all his learned specifics from college wrap around his current musical hyperfixations, and he’s surprised by how much attention he pays—such that when he looks up Remus has already paid the bill. Sirius thanks him, passes his phone back, and is pleasantly surprised by the little flutter at the pit of his stomach when he catches Remus’ secretive little grin at the skimming on that playlist. Somehow, Sirius know he’ll listen to it through at least twice end-to-end. He promises himself he’ll do the same thing. 

“Now.”

Sirius pulls an expectant face at Remus as he rests his chin on one fist and looks pointedly at Sirius. “Yes?”

“We could do two things at this point.” Remus’ voice is lofty, mitigated only a bit by the stretch he pulls through his upper body. Sirius takes his time looking at the lean length of his torso and hides a grin behind the last of his drink before Remus returns to his executive-shaped stance. “One, we could part ways and say ‘Oh this was so nice’ and probably never see each other again if we’re honest.”

Sirius looks at him expectantly for number two before giving up after several beats of extended silence. “Or?”

_ “Or. _ We could go get pie.”

Sirius is standing, just a bit giddy, and pulling on his coat without another thought. “Pie, absolutely pie. What sort of question is that, what sort of person do you think I am?!”

Remus laughs. Sirius notices, with a faint blush, that his overcoat has elbow pads.

They’re outside, walking and talking and occasionally bumping shoulders, halfway to the apparent pie shop when Remus stops suddenly on the sidewalk beside a tiny little bushel of trees. “I told you I used to live in this neighborhood, right?”

Sirius’ mind rolls back through their conversation, and somewhere between talking about collecting records and their favorite video games he finds the morsel of  _ This is one of my favorite areas, it was a great place to live for a while.  _ “Yeah.”

Remus’ face twists into cherubic, mischievous glee, and lifts up of the lower branches on one of the saplings beside him. “I always check to make sure this is here, check it out: my favorite thing in the whole city.”

Expecting maybe a little nest or a piece of art, something surprising and uncanny, Sirius ducks his head down to see properly at the trunk of the tree. He squints for a moment, looking through the negative space in the dark, before Remus points and Sirius cracks with laughter when he sees it; there, scrawled on the bark in what looks like fading Sharpie marker, is the proclamation of  _ TREE. _

“Art!” Sirius cries, immediately pulling out his phone to take a photo and pin this quirky little memory to the front of his brain. “Fuck the Smithsonian, look at what we have in front of us!”

“Right?” Remus is laughing and Sirius feels very light on his legs in the middle of this quiet side street in the middle of winter. He steps back, only a step away from Remus, and is suddenly struck by the fleeting notion of wanting to kiss him as he pockets his phone again. Sirius hasn’t kissed someone in months. Remus’ eyes are smiling along with his mouth, and Sirius glances at his lips for just a shaving of a second; they’re parted, just slightly, as though on an apprehensive inhale. Sirius had noticed how full they are at the restaurant, thinking it perhaps a trick of the candle light and shadow, but no, they’re still that perfect from up close. He thinks he might twitch forward, seal their distance—but Remus turns to keep walking as a tiny tug in Sirius’ lungs screams resistance. “Come on, we’re very close to pie.”

The place in front of which they eventually round up to a stop is, at first glance, a used bookstore. Sirius almost makes a quip about needing a new paperback, but Remus ushers them into the warmth and the surprisingly busy Monday-night clatter of an attached diner before Sirius can say anything besides, “Wow, didn’t know this was back here.”

“It’s a very badly-kept secret but a delicious place to go after a nice dinner,” Remus says, matter-of-fact, shrugging off his coat to sit them both at the classically-shaped bartop as Sirius follows him. He grins over at Sirius once they’re seated, and it’s either the whiskey or the heady spin of finding somebody genuinely charming after too many bad dates, but Sirius’ heart does a little spin behind his ribs when Remus says, conspiratorial and low in his throat, “I’m getting  _ key lime.” _

After some hemming and hawing, Sirius decides on apple crumble and orders a red ale to match Sirius’ nightcap of a stout. “I don’t know how you drink such dark beer,” Sirius says, pulling a face and shoveling a forkful of deliciously-seasoned cinnamon and nutmeg crust into his mouth. 

Remus shrugs and wipes ochre-colored foam from his top lip—Sirius squashes the compulsion to lick it off. “I didn’t used to. Honestly, I blame a delay on vacation with my dad for getting me keen on it.” 

“What, was it the only thing they had left on tap?”

“No, we were in the UK and driving from one city to another, but we got so delayed and caught in the rain that we had to pull over and get a motel.” Remus sticks up his fingers and begins ticking them off; “I was cold, tired, pissed, 19, and didn’t want to talk to anyone anymore, and I ordered a Guinness. It was just this ‘aha’ moment of understanding what the control conditions for one of these needs to be.”

“Oh, so I’m making you cold, tired, and pissed?!” Sirius quips around another bite of pie. Remus laughs and nudges their knees together. Sirius revels in the sparks it causes under his skin. 

“Those are the  _ entry level _ conditions, after then it’s just smooth sailing.” The smile Remus sends over to Sirius then is smooth, secretive, just a bit in awe if Sirius looks into it closely enough. He returns it as best he can and hopes it hums through the air at the same frequency. 

Sirius insists on paying for the pie and their beers after another half-hour of trading stories and laughter and the enigmatic little shifts of two people accidentally growing closer. He finds, as they stand up and re-arm themselves against the cold, that he wishes there were a way to extend the evening even further than inviting Remus back to his place. He wishes very suddenly that Marlene had plans outside the apartment. 

“Well this was really nice,” Sirius settles for sighing as they both take to the sidewalk. Sirius’ apartment is but five blocks north, and he doesn’t know if he trusts himself not to just invite Remus up at this point if he insists on walking Sirius home. 

“I think so too! It was fun, you’re...it was fun.” 

Sirius glances sideways at Remus when he stammers, the first sign of any sort of apprehension the man has shown all evening, and God if it isn’t endearing. They walk in silence for another block before Sirius steels his confidence and nods to himself. “We should set something up again soon, yeah?”

“Absolutely,” Remus says with half a laugh. He stops at the next corner and nods east. “This is me, I’m in Bloomingdale.”

Sirius stops alongside him and points up the shallow hill ahead of them. “And I’m just up there. You have my number, right?”

“Roger roger, and I’ve  _ also _ got your soundtrack for my walk home,” Remus confirms with a gentle smile. It catches at the corners of his eyes, and Sirius hardly has time to smile back before Remus pulls him into a hug.

With Remus’ arms around his waist, holding him warm and close and careful, Sirius is suddenly hit by the deep-boiling sense of something foreign. It’s something that says,  _ Oh, hello there, it’s you—it’s always been you. I’ve been waiting for you for a very long time.  _

Without another moment’s thought, Sirius pulls back with his hands on the lapels of Remus’ coat and kisses him. 

It’s a brief thing, a small press of lips that tastes of pie and beer and residuals of gin and bourbon hanging their around their mouths and noses, but Sirius feels the tenderness of it shoot through him in a violent spur of need. Remus is looking at him with a wide stare that looks like a mix of wonder and thankfulness, and he lets out a low sigh. 

“Oh, Sirius, I like you a  _ lot,” _ he breathes, the air steaming between them in a brief billow. Sirius chuckles and kisses him again, dwelling just a bit more on the warmth and the taste of it as he buzzes with contentment up to his very eyelashes. 

“Goodnight, Remus,” he murmurs when they pull apart again. 

“Yeah, if I don’t get myself home now I’m going to implode, so I’ll text you soon, okay?” Remus says, a smile still framing his face and lining his words with slightly-manic disbelief, and Sirius can only laugh again and nod. 

“Sounds good. Let me know when you’re home?”

“Yeah. I—goodnight, Sirius.”

The walk signal flickers and chirps its readiness, and Remus skips into a brisk clip across the street with one last wave at Sirius. Sirius watches him go for just a couple seconds before turning toward the hill to get himself home. 

Although, he thinks vaguely into the swirling warmth swallowing his insides in a steady, welcome crawl, if things continue like this, “home” might very quickly shift into the heart of somebody who wears glasses and laughs like springtime and orders key lime pie on a Monday night, with a kiss on the corner of S and Columbia that has just rewritten Sirius’ universe in the careful hand of what looks from here like Fate herself. 


End file.
